BRIEFLY NOTED
The Year of the Flood, by Margaret At-
wood (NanA. TaleselDoubleday; $26).
In her new novel, Atwood returns to the
post-apocalyptic mode of her 2003
book, "Oryx and Crake," with the story
of two women isolated as a genetically
engineered plague destroys mankind.
Both women have been members of
God's Gardeners, an eco-cult that has
long prophesied retribution for society's
apathy and selfishness, and while they
wait for signs of life from the outside
they spend their days remembering past
loves and not-quite-healed wounds. At-
wood's gallows humor is appealing-
one of the women joins the cult in
order to escape the abusive manager of
a human-meat burger joint-and her
complex characterization allows the
nover s environmental, Biblical, and soci-
010gical themes to intertwine seamlessly.
Gourmet Rhapsody, by Muriel Bar-
bery, translated from the French by Ali-
son Anderson (Europa; $15). This trifle
of a tale preceded Barbery's best-seller
"The Elegance of the Hedgehog" in
France but follows it in publication
here, which is rather like serving the
amuse-bouche after the entrée. An
eminent and ruthless food critic lies
dying, struggling to pinpoint the one
flavor from his youth that constitutes
"the first and ultimate truth" of his life.
His lucid memories-of his first taste
of sashimi ("a milky density unknown
even by clouds") and of Scotch ("My
organs no longer existed"), for exam-
ple-are intercut with jejune plaints
from a parade of figures, including the
children he acknowledges he never
loved, the wife he thinks of as a beau-
tiful object, and, wincingly, his cat.
Still, Barbery's invocations of gustatory
pleasure are seductive. Biting into a
fresWy plucked tomato, the critic exults
in "this plump little globe unleashing a
flood of nature inside us: a tomato, an
d "
a venture.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, by Lori D. Ginz-
berg (Hill & Wang; $25). In this deft
biography, Ginzberg firmly roots Stan-
ton-the first American to synthesize ar-
guments for women's equality in employ-
ment, income, property, custody, and
divorce-in the complex swell of nine-
teenth-century middle-class reform, and
reveals her thornier, less egalitarian side.
An abolitionist more out of political con-
venience than conviction, she not only
abandoned the movement for black male
suffrage after the Civil War to focus on
white women's suffrage but increasingly
made vitriolic attacks on immigrants, the
working class, and Mrican -Americans in
her writing and speeches. The conse-
quences of Stanton's racism and élitism
were "deep and hurtful," Ginzberg says,
and she attributes the continuing difficulty
of incorporating race and class differences
into gender politics, in large part, to Stan-
ton's mixed legacy.
The Fallen Sky, by Christopher Cokinos
(Tarcher; $27.95). In 1894, fifteen years
before his storied expedition to the
North Pole, Robert Peary crossed a
treacherous expanse of ice in Greenland
in search of another prize: a massive me-
teorite laden with rare metals from outer
space. In this hefty, industrious book,
Cokinos retraces Peary's steps, and those
of other meteor" obsessives," in an idio-
syncratic hunt of his own. The book
pairs, sometimes awkwardly, exciting
tales of scientific adventure and unself-
conscious rumination-particularly on
the subject of the author's failed first
marriage, the pain of which, he insists,
is "part and parcel of the hunt, my hunt,
for the meteorite hunters." As often as
not, though, the original meteorite
hunters had a more prosaic view of their
quests. Peary, for instance, had a simple
desire for glory and riches; when he
finally found that meteorite, which the
local Inuits had dubbed Woman (an-
other, nearby, they called Dog), he called
. " h b "
It t e rown mass.
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I.
HTHE NATIONAL PARKS,"
premieres Sunday, Sept 27th
at 8 P.M. E.S.T. on PHS.
Director Ken Burns presents a
story as uniquely American as
the Declaration of Independence
and just as radical: that the most
special places in the nation
should be preserved, not for royalty
or the rich, but for everyone.
pbs.org/nationalparks
A FILM BY KEN BURNS
THE NATIONAL PARKS
America's Best Idea
Be more 0) PBS.
THE NEW YORKER, 5EPTEMBER 28, 2009 79